Small
Business Trends

Terms of
Service

Guidelines Governing this Site

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF
SERVICE CAREFULLY. THE TERMS OF SERVICE MAY HAVE CHANGED SINCE YOUR LAST VISIT
TO THIS WEBSITE. BY ACCESSING OR USING THIS WEBSITE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE
TERMS OF SERVICE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH ALL OF THE TERMS OF SERVICE, DO NOT
USE THIS WEBSITE.

Effective Date: The Terms of Service
were last updated on March 24, 2014.

We at Small Business Trends
LLC provide this Site for the benefit of our users. We created the Terms of
Service to address commenting, content submission, and other practices
governing the Site. (For privacy matters, please visit our Privacy Policy.)

We reserve the right to
change any of the terms, conditions or policies of the Site, at any time in our
sole discretion. If we decide to change the Terms of Service, we will publish a
new version on the Site. Any such changes will be effective upon publishing the
revisions. Your continued use of the Site following publishing of any changes
constitutes your acceptance of such changes.

ARTICLES AND SITE CONTENT

Uncompensated
Submissions

The following applies to
article submissions for which no monetary compensation is paid to you by us.

By submitting articles or
otherwise engaging in any communication within the Site, you are granting Small
Business Trends LLC (and its assignees) the royalty-free, perpetual,
irrevocable, exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt,
publish, translate, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform,
sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, and sell your submissions
to the Site (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate your submissions
in other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or later
developed.

Compensated
Submissions

The following applies to
certain submissions for which monetary compensation is paid to you by us.

If we have entered into a
signed, written agreement with you specifying that your submissions are a
"work made for hire," then the issues related to ownership of
copyright of your submissions are specified in that agreement and that
agreement shall prevail on those issues. In the absence of such written
agreement, you agree that you are granting Small Business Trends LLC (and its
assignees) the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, exclusive right and
license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, distribute,
transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, create derivative
works from, transfer, and sell your submissions to the Site (in whole or part)
worldwide and/or to incorporate your submissions in other works in any form,
media, or technology whether now known or later developed.

All
Submissions

The following applies to all
submissions, whether compensated or uncompensated.

You are solely responsible
for the content of your submissions. We reserve the right, in our sole
discretion, to edit, refuse to publish or remove any content from the Site for
any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to, that we believe part or
all of the content: (i) is in need of editing for grammar, spelling or overall
readability; (ii) is off topic; (iii) is inaccurate; (iv) is false, misleading
or defamatory; (v) is offensive, abusive or uncivil in tone; (vi) is harmful,
threatening or intimidating; (vii) contains profanity, hate messages or
personal attacks against others; (viii) constitutes spam, phishing or any form
of advertising or solicitation; (ix) is used in conjunction with any automated
or other means to artificially drive user traffic to the Site; (x) disguises
the origin of any user content transmitted to the Site; (xi) impersonates
another person or misrepresents your affiliation with a person or entity; (xii)
violates another person's or entity's intellectual property rights, publicity
or privacy rights or other legal rights; (xiii) contains software viruses or
any other malicious code, files or programs which may interrupt, destroy or limit
the functionality of computer software or hardware or telecommunications
equipment; or (xiv) is otherwise inappropriate or undesirable for the Site.

ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS

We welcome high-quality,
on-topic articles for publication; however, we do not pay compensation for
unsolicited article submissions. Important: we get a high volume of email -
please contact the Editor first via email before submitting any written
material. Should we decide to publish a submission, we will give
attribution to the submitting writer through an article byline or similar
designation. Send email to: [email protected].

COMMENTS AND USER GENERATED CONTENT

By submitting comments, audio
interviews, podcasts, polls, surveys, trackbacks, articles and other content to
the Site, you are granting Small Business Trends LLC the royalty-free,
perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, right and license to use, reproduce,
modify, adapt, publish, translate, distribute, transmit, publicly display,
publicly perform, sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, and sell
your submissions to the Site (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate
your submissions in other works in any form, media, or technology whether now
known or later developed.

We reserve the right, in our
sole discretion, to edit, refuse to publish or remove any comments, articles
and user-generated content from the Site that we believe may be prohibited or
inappropriate under the All Submissions section of the Terms of Service.

TRADEMARKS

"Small Business
Trends," "PowerBlog Review," "TrendTracker,"
"SellingtoSmallBusinesses.com" and "SmallBizTrends," are
trademarks of and owned by Small Business Trends LLC. The "Small Business
Trends," "PowerBlog Review," "TrendTracker" and
"SellingtoSmallBusinesses.com," logos are also trademarks of and
owned by Small Business Trends LLC.

All third-party trademarks
and other third-party intellectual property rights remain the property of their
respective third-party owners.

Notice and Take Down Procedures;
Copyright INFRINGEMENT Agent

We respect the intellectual
property rights of others. Pursuant to 17 USC Â§ 512 as amended by Title
II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA"), the Site has
instituted procedures to receive written notification of claimed infringements
and to process such claims in accordance with the DMCA. If you believe your
copyrights are being infringed, you may file a notification of such
infringement with the following Designated Agent:

A statement that you have a good faith belief that the
complained of use of the material is not authorized by the copyright
owner, its agent or the law.

A statement that the information that you have supplied
in the notification is accurate, and indicating under penalty of perjury,
that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on behalf of the
copyright owner.

A physical or electronic signature of the copyright
owner or authorized representative.

Any notification of a claimed
infringement that fails to substantially comply with the above provisions will
not be considered as providing actual knowledge or an awareness of facts or
circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.

Please file a notice of
infringement each time you wish to report alleged acts of infringement.

Please note that we will
terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the account of any user who repeatedly
submits infringing material to the Site.

Please also note that the
information provided in your notification, including any personal information
contained therein, may be forwarded to the person who has provided the
allegedly infringing content, and sending us such notification constitutes your
consent to share this information with the alleged infringer.

Please also note that if you
make any material misrepresentation in your notification that the material or
activity is infringing, you will be liable for all damages, including costs and
attorneys' fees, incurred by us, the alleged infringer, the copyright owner or
any authorized licensee of the copyright owner as the result of our relying
upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or
activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or
ceasing to disable access to it.

We may give notice of a claim
of copyright infringement to our users by means of a general notice on the
Site, electronic mail to a user's email address in our records, or by written
communication sent by first-class mail to a user's address in our records.

SITE USAGE

You agree not to do any of
the following: (i) contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted; (ii)
collect personal data about other users for commercial or unlawful purposes;
(iii) use automated means, including scripts, spiders, robots, crawlers, data
mining tools, etc., to download or upload data to or from the Site; (iv)
attempt to gain unauthorized access to our computer system or to any other
user's computer system; (v) forge any TCP/IP packet header or part thereof in
any email or article submission; or (vi) engage in any
activity that disrupts, diminishes the quality of, interferes with the
performance of, or impairs the functionality the Site.

We reserve the right, without
notice and in our sole discretion, to revoke your right to use the Site and
block or prevent your future access to the Site.

We also reserve the right to
fully cooperate with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting
or directing us to disclose any information as necessary to satisfy any
applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request.

ADVERTISING DISCLOSURE

This Site and associated magazine is run by a small business for small businesses. Our mission is to provide small business success daily in the form of news, information and business resources.

Like most news and media businesses, this electronic publication and magazine is monetized by various types of advertising and sponsorships. Because of that support, we are able to provide a vast array of information and resources to our small business peers and readers free of charge.

Monetization includes banner ads, sponsored content and affiliate ad links. Advertisements and sponsorships are sold by our Advertising Department, which is separate from the Editorial Team. Some ads are placed algorithmically via Google AdSense or other ad networks, and we have little to no control over those. Affiliate links are placed in certain limited parts of the Site and the vast majority of such affiliate links are placed algorithmically, and not inserted by individual authors.

Small Business Trends LLC is required by the FTC to inform you that a relationship exists between it and some of the products or services it reviews, recommends or promotes.

Advertising and affiliate compensation has no bearing on the Site’s views or individual reviewers' views on products and services, or that of our paid writing staff. For more on our policy regarding reviews, please see our ethics statement.

We take our mission seriously to provide information and resources to serve millions of small businesses. We are self-funded, and the vast majority of the information and resources have been provided at no charge to our audience for more than a decade.

DISCLAIMER

The Site includes unmoderated
information containing the personal opinions and other expressions of the
persons who submit entries on a wide range of topics. Such entries are the
opinions of the specific authors and are not statements of advice, opinion, or
information of the Site or any or any Site-affiliated person or entity. You
should use the content on the Site in the same manner as any other educational
medium and you should not rely on the content to the exclusion of your own
judgment.

We do not guarantee or
warrant that files available for downloading from the Internet will be free of
viruses, worms, Trojan horses or other code that may manifest contaminating or
destructive properties.

You are responsible for
implementing sufficient procedures and checkpoints to satisfy your particular
requirements for accuracy of data input and output, and for maintaining a means
external to this Site for the reconstruction of any lost data. We do not assume
any responsibility or risk for your use of the Internet.

We are not liable for any
loss or damages incurred as a result of the use of the Site or any links,
including but not limited to any of the following: (i) claims relating to your
reliance upon information obtained on this Site or any links thereto; (ii) errors,
loss of data, interruption in availability of data, viruses or other harmful
components; or (iii) any other legal claims.

CONTACT

If
you have any questions about the Terms of Service, please contact us at [email protected].